


Deine Zauber Binden Wieder

by nnozomi



Series: orchestra'verse [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Character of Color, Classical Music, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-10
Updated: 2012-04-10
Packaged: 2017-11-03 09:43:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/380026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nnozomi/pseuds/nnozomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hogwarts is known for the high level of its student orchestra, and the star performers are violinist witch Hermione Granger and oboist wizard Draco Malfoy. A pity they can’t stand each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deine Zauber Binden Wieder

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2012 wizard-love fest, for a prompt that began with "Orchestra AU." Since this is (obviously) an AU, I’ve felt free to make a few more small departures from canon, mostly having to do with names, physical characteristics, uniforms, and the introduction of one or two minor OCs. You have been warned. By the way, in Britain, the “orchestra leader” is not the conductor but the principal first violin, called in America the concertmaster or –mistress.

 

 

Introduction: Beethoven Symphony no. 9 “Choral” (Molto vivace)

Blaise Zabini tapped the conductor’s wand against his palm and sighed a little, watching as the rehearsal room clock’s long hand swung over from “Warming Up” to “Tuning.” Padma Patil, in the second oboe’s chair, clapped her hands sharply twice. The various noises, melodious and less so, that had been filling the big room died away with a last gentle thunk from the percussion section, where Ron Weasley’s red head was bent close over the timpani.

The leader stood up, shaking densely curly dark brown hair away from her shoulder rest, and gestured with her bow. After a fractional, sublimely timed pause, the first oboist sounded his A and the tuning began.

Blaise sighed again. Eye contact was good, everyone knew that. Disdainful glares and arrogant stares were not what the gods of music had in mind. What was he going to do with Granger and Malfoy?

Oh, they were good enough, that wasn’t his problem. The Hogwarts orchestra had long trailed behind those of the other European magical schools—Dumbledore just didn’t have an ear for music, and his preference for Quidditch had been a terrible influence. Blaise’s mother had even considered sending him to Durmstrang simply because of its reputation as inheritor of the great German wizarding music tradition, unequalled in Europe. Bruckner’s alma mater, after all. Fortunately, Maman had decided it was worth sacrificing some aspects of his musical education to have him close at hand in Britain.

And Hogwarts had caught up no end over the last few years. Having Percy Weasley as orchestra leader had made a big difference. Not only was he a perfectionist on his own behalf (although how a violinist had ever come out of the Weasley family, Blaise would never know), he was willing to put in any amount of time and effort to drag the rest of the orchestra up to his level, and his work had really paid off.

Blaise had been worried that the level would sag when Percy left, not to mention Penny Clearwater leading the winds from first flute, but if anything they were just getting better and better. Now a sixth-year like Blaise himself, Hermione Granger was as precise and fervent a leader as Percy had been, really a joy to work with from the conductor’s perspective.

If only she weren’t so…well…so anti-Malfoy. Not even anti-Slytherin, she never seemed to have a problem with Blaise himself when he was on the podium, or with, say, Greg Goyle on tuba, or Millie Bulstrode their virtuoso first bassoonist. It was only the blond oboist whom she couldn’t seem to get along with, and God only knew Malfoy returned her enmity with interest. It didn’t help that neither of them could get rid of the other—they had plenty of good violinists but no one who could lead the way Hermione did, and Padma was a decent enough oboist but not in Malfoy’s class.

“Maestro?”

Blaise realized he’d been standing there staring into space even after the tuning had finished. “Oh, sorry,” he said, mounting the podium. “Okay, look, today we really need to get work done on the second movement. I know it seems like a long time still until the Founders’ Concert, but we’ve got to save plenty of rehearsal hours for whipping the chorus into shape—“ there were some giggles— “and there’s the concerto movement to get to grips with too, after the competition. I’m assuming, by the way, that you lot have all played the Dukas until you know it by heart and we can get by with hardly any rehearsal time for that, right?” He looked around, getting a patient nod from Hermione, a smile from Cho Chang at the first viola desk, a nervous look from Neville Longbottom at principal cello (he’d be all right on the night, though, he always was), rolled eyes from Malfoy, and a cheeky grin from Ginny Weasley in the trumpets. “All right. First years especially, make sure you’re getting your practice done, and check with your part leaders if you’re struggling.” He did his best Professor Snape glare at Tessa Fairleigh in the cellos, who possessed none of the meekness that a Muggle-born first year ought to. “So let’s do it. Second movement. Weasley, are you ready back there?”

“Believe it,” from Ron, mallets poised over the timpani. Blaise grinned at him, touched his wand to the conductor’s stand to make the second movement score appear, and took a deep breath. His wand went up, Hermione tucked her violin under her chin and the others followed suit, there was that wonderful here-it-all-begins moment of stillness, and then they crashed into the second movement of Beethoven’s Ninth.

Blaise let them get as far as the first ending, then reluctantly tapped the music stand, bringing everyone to a stop. “Okay, not bad considering we haven’t looked at it in a couple of days. The biggest problem is the dotted rhythms. I want this thing to _move_. I don’t care if it’s crass to hurry it, we’re a student orchestra and we can get away with it, they’ll just put it down to youthful vigor.” There were a few giggles; Hermione looked pained. “So you lot really have to keep the dotted quarter notes short enough and make the eighth notes really snappy, otherwise it’ll drag like nobody’s business. Basses, I’m looking at you.” He swung his wand in the direction of the contrabass section, where Ernie Macmillan looked affronted, Ruth Miles looked resigned, and the younger students looked guilty. “Not your fault, it just takes that much longer for the sound to come out of those elephants of yours. Think a little forward, watch Granger and Longbottom like they were the loves of your life—“ he heard a snort from somewhere, all too likely the woodwind section, and ignored it—“and keep thinking about it, _all_ the time. Okay?”

Ernie nodded, still looking offended—he never approved of Blaise’s tempi anyway. Can’t win ‘em all. Blaise considered the others. “Strings—what I just said to the basses, pretty much. Watch your first chairs, play like someone’s put a Puppet Hex on you and you’re all one person. Miss Granger, Hughes, Miss Chang, Longbottom, stay right with me the whole way. If you don’t have the parts as good as memorized already, now’s your chance.” Nods. “Winds, you’re not doing badly but you can be even more precise. Miss Fairleigh, you can be a bit more aggressive.” Tessa’s big sister Anne Fairleigh, the Hufflepuff fifth-year playing first flute, looked surprised. “I mean it. Don’t let Malfoy there intimidate you, take the lead away from him. Yes, Malfoy, I did just say that.” This time the sniff came from somewhere in the first violins, and again Blaise ignored it. “Weasley—the timpani are sounding great. Don’t hold anything back, make the whole room vibrate when you come in at the beginning.” Ron looked pleased. “Okay, let’s do it again. Take the second ending this time.”

He thought of stopping them again when they got to the slow section, but the look of anticipation on Malfoy’s face was too good to waste. Let the man have his fun. And here it came, the long oboe solo passage. Blaise smiled, in spite of himself, and saw from the corner of his eye Hermione wearing the same _I wish I could pretend I wasn’t loving this_ face. Spoiled brat, blood purist par excellence, disgustingly contemptuous of anyone who didn’t live up to his high standards—all that was Malfoy, but my God, what an oboist.

“Maestro?” Hermione had her bow in the air. “Did you notice, the woodwinds have got to work on the tuning?” She half turned to face the hapless wind players. “Not the oboe solo, the long tones in the accompaniment. The clarinet and the second horn are going awfully flat.”

Blaise shrugged. “Sorry, Miss Bones, Miss Lovegood, she’s right. Work on it, please.” Susan and Luna nodded, Susan scribbling a note to herself on her music.

They went over it again, slow niggling work that was tiring but fun. Finally, Blaise glanced up at the clock, guessing about a half hour left. “Okay. Thanks, everybody. I want to do the fourth-movement Turkish March for a little, so the immediately concerned stick around, everybody else can go home—or get some solo practice in,” he added meaningfully. “Especially if you’re going in for the concerto competition, it’s almost your last chance. Leave _quietly_ or I’ll hex you quiet.”

There was a general exodus, with the usual good-natured grumbling and muttering. Blaise glanced around to check on his fife-and-drum corps: Millie, calm and focused as always; Megan Jones, bracing the heavy contrabassoon with an expression that said _Yes, I am a Hufflepuff and proud of it, want to make something of it?_ ; Zach Smith at the bass drum, Colin Creevey holding up the triangle… Colin had come to Hogwarts a raw Muggle-born with an urge to absorb absolutely everything about wizarding culture, and of course that included the orchestra, though he’d never learned an instrument and didn’t have much of an ear. His housemate Ron Weasley had resignedly taken Colin under his wing in the percussion section, and done a pretty good job of raising him up, acquiring the status of an idol in Colin’s eyes. A long-standing Gryffindor joke, or so Blaise understood. He still didn’t have too much confidence in Colin’s ability to get through this crucial part—anybody could hit the triangle, but the timing had to be just right—but Ron had vouched for his protégé. Last but not least, Pansy Parkinson in the woodwinds. Pansy’s piccolo wasn’t black or silver as usual, but gold—nothing but the best for Miss pure-blood patrician Parkinson. She wasn’t just another spoiled brat, though: the piccolo piped up with a clean, round, precisely pitched sound that made him smile.

They went through it three times, and he still wasn’t satisfied but time was up. “Any of you going in for the concerto competition?” he asked at random, and wasn’t surprised to see Millie’s hand go up. “Good luck to you, Miss Bulstrode—not that you’ll need it. What about you, Weasley, lost your nerve?”

“Eff off, Zabini,” Ron growled. “Find me a percussion concerto and I’m your man. Not my fault all the composers hate percussion.”

“Life is tough, isn’t it? Okay, everybody, good night. Thanks a lot, it’s getting good.” Blaise stretched and yawned and watched them put away instruments and leave one by one, Millie’s thick single braid sketching a saucy goodbye in the air behind her. That was everybody—no, the practice rooms were still lit. He wandered over to check who the holdouts were.

No surprise, Malfoy and Granger, each working away at their own concerto. They should all see some fireworks at the competition.

 

Exposition: Tchaikovsky, Violin Concerto (Allegro moderato)

Anybody at all could participate in the first round of the concerto competition; there was no audience but the judges, and it was with piano accompaniment, not the full orchestra. Blaise came in early, nodding politely to Professor Vector—herself a fine violinist when she felt like it—Professor McGonagall, and Dumbledore’s brother Aberforth, a distinguished trombone player in his time.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Zabini,” McGonagall greeted him cheerfully. “I hear you have quite a selection for us this time. Any surprises?”

“We’ll see, Professor.” Blaise grinned at her, passing the comment sheets. “I hope you’ll enjoy yourself.”

“May we look forward to the usual accompanist?”

“Naturally. Who else sightreads so well? If only his presence didn’t intimidate the younger ones so…”

“It’s a shame, Zabini, that you are not more easily intimidated,” said the familiar silken voice from the entrance, and Severus Snape stepped into the room, his black robes swirling around him. He bowed briefly to the two other professors and to Aberforth, and sat down at the piano. “Which tone-deaf incompetents are on the menu today, may I ask?”

Blaise got up to hand him the list. Snape set it on the music stand and opened the keyboard lid, dropping into a quick series of scales (C#, F#, B, E—trust the man to start from the hard end and work down) while he read the list. “Miss Bulstrode—so I should hope. Mr. Hughes—a rival for Miss Granger, I take it. Miss Fairleigh—not even waiting till her sixth year? Mr. Nott—keeping up with his lady love. I’m glad to see he is not attempting Rachmaninoff.”

“He said he’d save that for seventh year,” Blaise offered. Theo Nott, one of his dormmates, was probably the best pianist in the school after Snape himself, and in fact had some of the same irritatingly laid-back arrogance about it.

“Indeed. The Ministry should consider passing a law about teenagers and Rachmaninoff. Miss Chang—a pity there are so few viola options for her. Mr. Longbottom, well, well. At least he appears to know his limitations.” Snape modulated to the minor scales. “The entire horn section, I see. Whose idea was it this year?”

Blaise swallowed. “Er, I think it was a bet Goldstein made with the Weasley twins before they left. But they’re really quite good. The horns, I mean.”

“That remains to be seen. And last are our two prima donnas? Miss Granger—ah, yes. Always the obvious answer. And Mr. Malfoy. Well now.”

Professor McGonagall cleared her throat. “Have you warmed up sufficiently, Severus? Miss Bulstrode is due in five minutes.”

“Thank you, Minerva, I had noticed. And as for warming up—not quite, I feel. I require your assistance.”

“Oh, now really, Severus, we’re not here for that—“ McGonagall protested, but she was already standing up. Blaise backed up against the wall, careful not to let his grin show too obviously. McGonagall cleared her throat gently once or twice, and nodded to Snape. “Nothing too demanding, if you please.”

Snape inclined his head, and started to play. Blaise got it after the first couple of bars, and nearly choked trying not to snicker. McGonagall swept around to face him. “Now do be realistic! I’m not warmed up at all myself, and I was never any hand at coloratura. ‘Glitter and Be Gay’ is _quite_ out of the question. Do I ask you to play boogie-woogie?”

“Singers,” Snape muttered. “Very well. This, then.” A series of disconcerting modulations, and Bernstein became Mozart. McGonagall’s eyebrows threatened to disappear into her hairline, but she smiled, and after the introduction began to sing. “Non so piu, cosa son, cosa faccio…”

Blaise leaned back and enjoyed himself. For her age, whatever it might be, Professor McGonagall still had a clear, powerful mezzo-soprano, with rich dark tones that came out especially nicely in the lower register. It was just weird to hear her singing about being an adolescent boy who couldn’t stop thinking about, er, love. By the time she had descended deliciously through the mountains and fountains to reach the final “…parlo d’amor con me,” delivered with delicate precision, he was having to hold his breath to keep from giggling. Professor Vector was smiling gently, and Aberforth had a huge polka-dotted handkerchief covering half his face.

McGonagall cut off the last note neatly and waited motionless through the short postlude; then she and Snape exchanged identical half-bows. She cleared her throat again. “Feeling prepared for the competition students yet?”

“Oh, indeed. A let-down, though—“ Snape actually smiled.

McGonagall rolled her eyes at him—was she blushing just a little?—and returned to her seat. Blaise stepped forward, ready to turn pages for the pianist. With perfect timing, there was a knock on the door. The first contestant had arrived.

Blaise’s first impression of Millicent Bulstrode, at the Slytherin table way back when, had been along the lines of: she’s bigger than me. In all directions. I bet she plays Quidditch. Either that or tuba. I think I’ll keep away for a while. He had figured out after a while that almost everybody thought like that the first time they met Millie. It was anybody’s guess how long she’d let things stay that way. Now, at sixteen, she was still taller and heavier than he was, but—having known her for going on six years—the general effect was somehow less “she might knock me over” and more “well actually I would like another helping, since you ask.” It didn’t hurt that she’d let her hair grow long since first year.

More than that, though, it was that he knew her from orchestra. If she’d been only a Quidditch player after all, he might never have thought she was anything but a sullen oversized lump. But he couldn’t look that way at anybody who played the bassoon that well, everything from the otherworldly flute-song of the introduction to “Rite of Spring” (Percy had been more of a risk-taker than anyone gave him credit for, putting that on the program) to the rock-solid low notes of the contrabassoon part in the Fifth, back in their second year when Cedric Diggory was still first chair. Millie was a star.

Her Mozart concerto was clean and clear and elegant. It was just a shame there weren’t more bassoon concertos; the Mozart was nice, but not all that thrilling as Mozart went. Finished with the first movement, she stood up without fanfare, thanked her Head of House for his accompaniment, nodded politely to the judges, and went out again without giving Blaise a glance. He sighed.

Professor McGonagall kept things moving briskly. Gwyn Hughes, Ravenclaw, principal second violin--Bach A minor, a bit marred by nerves but clear and pleasant. Anne Fairleigh, Muggle-born Hufflepuff, first flute—Nielsen, a little too ambitious but with promise for the future. Theo Nott, Slytherin pianist (and Anne’s boyfriend, much to everyone’s surprise), Schumann— technically well-done, if perhaps not Romantic enough.

Cho Chang, Ravenclaw, principal viola and the only seventh-year contestant—Hindemith, not terribly enthusiastic but skillful. (Most seventh-years bowed out of the orchestra to concentrate on NEWTs and job searches: the ones who stayed were planning a career in music, or just couldn’t bear to give it up yet. Blaise wasn’t sure which category Cho fell into.) Neville Longbottom, Gryffindor, principal cello—Haydn C major, bright and warm in tone for all Longbottom’s awkward nervousness. All four French horn players—Aaron Goldstein, Luna Lovegood, Daphne Greengrass, Ed Carmichael—Schumann, raucous and merrily successful, except for a few clammed high notes from Goldstein and Daphne. And who could blame them?

“I require an intermission,” Snape announced, as soon as the horns had made their exit.

“Of course, Severus,” McGonagall replied. Her voice was so sweetly complaisant that Blaise was pretty sure she was suppressing giggles. “Twenty minutes, perhaps? Tea and pastries, please,” she added to the air, and in moments a tray appeared from the kitchens.

“Now that was more like it.” Aberforth was still chuckling with satisfaction. “Not enough brass players making their presence felt around here. Not since those Weasley boys…”

Minerva looked wistful. “What a brass section we would have had if they’d all been here at once. Bill on first horn, Charlie on tuba, the twins on trombone, Ginny on trumpet…”

“I thank whatever gods may be,” Snape said irritably, “that Molly Weasley saw fit to spread her family out. And that exceptions to the Weasley-and-brass rule do in fact exist.”

“Percy would have been a really terrible brass player,” Blaise agreed, looking hopefully at the tray of refreshments. “And Ron’s much happier where he is.”

Aberforth shrugged. “Them’s the breaks. Have a tart, young man.” He helped himself as he spoke, spraying crumbs into his beard. “So what do you say so far, Minerva? Sophie? Not a clinker in the bunch, but not a diamond either, not by me.”

“Little pitchers,” Snape said harshly, jerking his chin at Blaise. “You will all remember, I take it, that Zabini is an observer but _not_ a participant in the decision.”

Fair enough, Blaise thought—it was tradition that the student conductor could hear the auditions but not take part in the deliberations, so as to avoid conflicts of interest—but he could tell without Legilimency that they all pretty much agreed with Aberforth. The best was yet to come. He took advantage of his position to the extent of a custard tart.

Snape was rubbing his eyes with one hand, rolling his shoulders. Well, no mystery there, the man had just sightread six completely different orchestra reductions, all but flawlessly. Blaise wondered if in his seventh year he’d have the nerve to ask his Head of House why he had chosen to make his living with potions rather than at the piano, or if a question like that would have to wait until he was as old as McGonagall and Snape as old as Dumbledore.

“Lemon tart, Severus?” McGonagall offered, gesturing towards the diminishing contents of the platter of sweets. Snape shook his head impatiently, draining his third cup of tea.

“Let us get on with it. We may as well face the know-it-all now as later.”

 

Severus glared at the curly hair dangling down the violinist’s back. Tchaikovsky was no favorite of his, and the orchestra reduction was tiring to play. Typical of Miss memorize-the-right-answer to choose it. He promised himself a long evening with the Well- Tempered Clavier or maybe the French Suites later, and began on the deceptively simple introductory phrase. The first twenty or so measures were his: he made the most of the steady, ominous crescendo, the threatening repeated low notes, to challenge her the way he did his Potions students on the first day of class.

She came in on a low A: a very simple, unadorned sound, without the exaggerated vibrato a lot of violinists used on Tchaikovsky.The solo lead-in was precise, immaculately in tune, full of things to come rather than trying to make a statement on its own. Severus watched her bow move, and made his left hand match her next entrance exactly. When she launched into the melody, it was in the same style, clear and sweet with no Romantic fullness of tone, almost enough to make him wonder if she thought she was playing Mozart. As the piece moved on and the accompaniment got more demanding (I am not a sixty-piece orchestra, thank you, Miss Granger) he had less attention to spare for the details of her performance, except to note that her technique was flawless.

The _molto espressivo_ was when it changed. No, when she showed what she’d been doing from the outset. Such a deceptively simple melody line, something any student violinist could play, but in the graceful sixteenth notes he heard her voice more clearly than he’d heard anything in that long afternoon. I am here, I _am_ the music, hear me, join me. She shouldn’t be able to do that, Severus snarled to himself, she was too young, too untried, she didn’t know the stories of pain and redemption the music could tell. But the violin’s voice said she did. For the first time that day he stumbled over the accompaniment.

No; he’d teach her to understand what she was doing, whether she liked it or not. The same guileless melody returned, an octave lower, and his right hand answered it with a skimming obligato. A slow, breath-held crescendo, and then the same one more time, this time high on her E string, and then a shimmering chromatic descent, her triplets exquisitely balanced against his eighth notes. Again, and then down, and then a rush upward to a challenging single triplet which he answered with the piano’s whole range. Now the melody was his while her bow and fingers blurred with their speed. Now it was a dance, the violin bouncing with seeming effortlessness over the accompaniment—

“All right, Miss Granger, thank you very much, that will do for now.” Minerva. “We’d like very much to hear the whole movement, but today there are time constraints.”

Severus felt his hands fly up from the keyboard. He just managed to stop himself from swinging around to demand of Minerva what she thought she was doing, interrupting them that way. Only the bitter habits of a lifetime of self-control kept him silent and still while his brain reported analytically that yes, the judges had heard enough in that excerpt to judge Granger’s technique and her musicianship—

He just wanted to play the rest of it with her, damn it. And he could guess she wanted to finish it too. Miss call-on-me-Professor-I’ve-studied-I-know-the-answer, Miss you-mustn’t-do-that- in-the-corridors-Ron-you’ll-get-in-trouble, Miss someone-in-the-second-violins-is-just-a-hair-flat- didn’t-you-hear it, Miss Granger had set aside all the things she ought to do and ought to be, all the responsibility she took on for herself and others, and let her violin sing the truth. How often did she ever have the chance for that?

“Yes, Professor McGonagall,” said the flat Muggle-born voice obediently, and Severus wondered for a moment if he’d imagined everything he’d heard in her playing— _a touch of transference there, Snape?_ said a mocking voice in the back of his head. Then his peripheral vision caught her face. “Thank you, Professor Snape.”

Severus took a deep breath. “You may yet transcend yourself, Miss Granger.”

“…Thank you,” she said again, in a smaller voice, and the door closed.

There was silence as the three judges took notes. Zabini, whose presence Snape had entirely forgotten about even as the boy turned pages for him, leaned nonchalantly against the wall with his arms folded. Severus blotted his forehead with the inner sleeve of his robe.

Sophie Vector’s head came up first, followed by Aberforth’s, and then—after a pause in which Severus noticed she wasn’t writing anything—Minerva’s. “Well, ladies and gentlemen,” she said easily, “are we ready for the last contestant?”

Aberforth grunted, Vector nodded. Zabini went to open the door.

Draco Malfoy, typically, had put on his best dress robes, regulation student black trimmed with silver and showing dark green where the light hit it. The keys on his oboe gleamed silver. Severus, who had known him since the day he was born, saw in moments how nervous he was. _Calm down, boy, you’ll only ruin it for yourself_ , he thought uselessly. Malfoy talked a good game, but could never cope with being put on the spot—one reason why he was always coming off worst against the Gryffindor Quidditch gang, and why his practical test results didn’t match up to his written work in most subjects. All mouth and no trousers, some people called him, but if nobody was watching him, he shone. _He’d be an introvert if he could get away with it,_ Severus thought with pity, and more obscurely, _Thank God I was born a half-blood._

He took the sheet music Draco handed him, and jerked his chin at the boy to _get on with it already_. Draco turned to face the judges, ducking his head in a sketch of a bow. Severus hoped Minerva would understand that the perfunctory movement came from nerves, not from arrogance. _Well, maybe a bit of both?_ He shook the extraneous thoughts away and watched closely as Malfoy took a breath and raised the oboe to his lips: this concerto began with oboe and orchestra together, no lengthy introduction to get one’s bearings in.

Eight minutes or so later, Severus was nearly as breathless as the oboist. Strauss asked a lot of his orchestra. He wiped his face on his sleeve again. Draco, very flushed, looked slightly dazed, the way one did after a stressful performance; he probably didn’t remember much of it. Just as well? No, he’d done well, stumbling over the fingering in one or two places, some of the breath control not what it might have been, but a strong performance buoyed up by his beautiful tone. He managed to thank the judges in a respectably steady voice, and got himself out of the room.

Minerva, writing busily, sighed. “That’s that finished for this year, then,” she murmured. “Mr. Zabini, thank you very much for joining us. Do you have any observations you’d like to share before you leave?”

Blaise Zabini moved to the door. “Well, Professor, it’s Malfoy or Miss Granger, isn’t it? From where I stand.”

“And if so, which one would be your preference?”

“Minerva…” Severus warned.

“She’s just curious, eh?” Aberforth rumbled. “What’s the verdict, Zabini?”

“Well…” Genuinely uncertain, Severus judged, not just hesitating for effect, although Zabini was so hard to unsettle that you never could tell. _Conductors_ , he thought venomously. “Well, sir, it’s awfully hard to say. I think of the two of them Malfoy can catch the Snitch, but Miss Granger has more Quaffles through the hoop—he may be the better musician taken all in all, but she’s the better performer. One of them’s going to be disappointed, but for the rest of us it’s a win either way.”

“Thank you, Mr. Zabini,” Minerva said, superbly straight-faced. “I’ll see you’re informed of the results as soon as our deliberations are concluded.”

“Thank you, Professors, Mr. Dumbledore.” Zabini made his exit.

The four adults looked at each other. “Let’s see if we can be out of here before midnight,” Minerva said. Severus closed his eyes.

 

*************

Being a Malfoy in Slytherin House, and a sixth-year, meant a room to oneself. Draco enjoyed the use of a vast desk, a bed supplied with considerably more than the average number of pillows, and a thick carpet. Right now he was curled up on the carpet by one of the magical “windows,” hugging his knees, cursing Hermione Granger.

The concerto competition…the chance to play a solo, in front of everyone, at the Founders’ Concert…it should have been his! He’d been planning it for years now, daydreaming at first, then choosing the concerto, then putting in hours and hours of practice. He dreamed the Strauss every night now, hummed it unconsciously during class, knew it not just by heart but in his bones. It was his solo, his chance, how dare some upstart Mudblood violinist take it away from him!

For her it was surely nothing, just another opportunity to show off, but for him… .

If he’d won the concerto competition, in his sixth year, he might have had a chance of convincing his father to let him go on with music. Lucius had been pleased when his son turned out such a good musician, never missed a chance to show him off in front of important visitors—a man of culture and breeding had to have music at his fingertips—but to make a profession of it? That was rather—well, low-class. Malfoys weren’t buskers. Malfoys weren’t minstrels. Even Percy Weasley had chosen to take a Ministry job rather than go on with his violin, and the Weasleys were just about as low-class as families came.

(Draco remembered, though, walking past Percy in the rehearsal room after the Leaving Concert that year, Weasley on his knees nestling his violin into its case. He’d seen the tear tracks on the older boy’s face, and been struck too shy to tell him how much he admired him, Weasley or no.)

Zabini, of course, had every intention of going into it professionally, but it was different for him. His family was—well—European, his mother French (from Martinique actually, did that still count?) and his father Italian, and _both_ his parents were musicians, not to mention an assortment of musical stepparents on both sides. Draco had often listened to Virginie Desfraises’ flute recitals on the wireless. He’d never heard Giuliano Zabini conduct—the man worked mostly on the Continent—but knew the name well enough. Blaise was just lucky he’d turned out talented, imagine what his parents would have made of it if he’d announced he wanted to be an Auror or a professor at Hogwarts or a conductor of the Knight Bus variety.

Malfoys didn’t do any of that, at least not in the last few generations. Malfoys were gentlemen of leisure, or politicians, or both. Also, Draco reflected, Malfoys didn’t get divorced. He had long resolved to think very carefully indeed before getting married.

He sprawled back on the thick carpet, hands behind his head, and mused on possible brides as a momentary distraction from the misery of the competition results. No need to think outside of the orchestra, of course—nearly all the girls of good family were there, and anyway a girl who played an instrument well was so much more attractive. If they only knew. Pity Chang was a halfblood and Weasley, G. a peasant…he’d already been out with Parkinson and Greengrass both, and couldn’t see spending decades on end in their company…Miles never stopped talking, and she was a Gryffindor anyway…Fairleigh was a Mudblood, and in any case only had eyes for Nott…Mudbloods.

It all came back to the same place, didn’t it. Granger…

Well, never let it be said that a Malfoy gave up without a fight. Maybe he could prove she’d won it by treachery, as it were. McGonagall favoring her House, or some such…Vector soft on violinists…it wasn’t impossible. He’d worked so hard.

Professor Snape would know, and Snape could be trusted—in an odd, backwards, Slytherin kind of way. Draco rolled adroitly to his feet and fished his tie out from under the bed, where he’d flung it in his initial fit of rage. Snape would be in the Potions lab, he always was. One could count on one’s Head of House.

 

Development: Mozart Quartet for Oboe and Strings (Rondeau: Allegro)

The red-haired young man was working late. “Accio staircase construction records of 1763,” he muttered, not bothering with his wand, and held out a hand automatically to receive the parchment. When it failed to appear, he looked up and frowned. “Oh damn, who locked that…” Rubbing his eyes under his glasses, he got up stiffly and went out to the half-size door tucked under the stairs in the corridor. “Alohomora,” he said briskly, and the door rattled but failed to open. “Oh really, Alohomora, come now!” he repeated, and it creaked open at last. The parchments which had been bumping against it fell into his arms, coating his robes with dust and making him cough. He looked up uneasily at the powdery wood of the storage room roof, and made haste to return to his desk. “The sooner we can remove from here…” he muttered to himself. “Hello, what are you doing here?”

An owl was waiting on his windowsill, jittering about impatiently. He opened the window to let it in and removed its burden, after which it shot off again into the darkness, stayed not by snow nor rain nor gloom of night. The young man sat down at his desk and read his letter. His sandy eyebrows went up. For a moment, his whole demeanor changed, his face softening. Then he shook his head, and muttered to himself as he tapped his wand on the desk and caused to appear a handful of official memos which he sorted through rapidly. “Yes. Yes, why not? The Minister ought to…” With some difficulty, he found a piece of new parchment and a quill, and began to write swiftly in a precise, clerkly hand. “Dear Professor McGonagall: With regard to your request of the thirteenth inst, I am pleased to report that…

**********************

Blaise put his wand down unnoticed in the orchestra’s applause. The first runthrough of the Tchaikovsky concerto had been pretty ragged—most of them were sightreading, after all—but even that hadn’t detracted from Hermione’s artistry. Neville was stomping with both feet, round face glowing with pride in his fellow Gryffindor, while Parvati Patel whistled shrilly from the clarinet section, Luna Lovegood clapped solemnly with eyes so wide she looked like a house-elf, and even Macmillan thumped on the side of his bass. Even Malfoy was applauding, Blaise saw with amusement, although the blond boy’s face was impassive.

He gave them a good long time to get it out of their systems—Hermione herself had taken a single half bow and was standing there fidgeting, looking as if she wasn’t sure what to do next—and then tapped his wand gently on the stand. “Thanks, everyone. Beautiful work, Miss Granger, sorry the rest of us can’t keep up with you yet—but we’ll get there. Or else,” he added, with obligatory menace. “Okay, people, that’s it for the day. Oh—Miss Granger, Miss Chang, Longbottom, Malfoy? Professor McGonagall would like to see you in her office, she says.”

“Now?” Malfoy complained.

“Immediately after rehearsal, she said. That’s now, isn’t it? Don’t keep the lady waiting. See the rest of you tomorrow.”

They trooped off, respectively curious, resigned, nervous, and irritated. The rehearsal room emptied quickly—most people had some homework to finish, or wanted to get in some free time in the common rooms before bed. Blaise grinned to himself, making a mental note to put special effort into his next Transfiguration essay. Professor McGonagall had unwittingly removed the two most likely to stay late and practice, leaving his way clear.

“Miss Bulstrode,” he called.

Millie, crouched over her bassoon case, raised her head. “Huh?”

“Can I have a word?”

“Wait,” she ordered, and went back, unhurried, to putting her instrument away. He did wait, until the whole room had emptied—she wasn’t usually so slow, but must have gotten some idea of his import. Finally she came over to where he stood by the podium, swinging the heavy bassoon case as though it weighed nothing. “What can I do you for?”

“There you have it,” he shrugged. “I’ve decided I’d like to have it off with you, are you interested?” This technique, though anything but subtle, had gotten him a pretty good success rate so far.

“Why not? If you mean it.” Calm as always. As he’d guessed, then; Millie wasn’t the type to be knocked off her perch by a stray proposition.

“Oh, I do. Would now suit you? How do you like it?”

Millie looked straight down at him, very serious. Her eyes were the same rich chestnut brown as her hair, with long eyelashes. If pretty was good, Blaise reflected, pretty on a larger scale was even better, right? “Look, Zabini, I’m not the expert at this you are, but I know what I like. The real thing, no messing around, no funny positions, no time wasted on foreplay, okay? Suit you? Because if it doesn’t, I expect you won’t have much trouble finding someone else to wave your wand at.”

Blaise laughed. “You make it sound so businesslike, Miss Bulstrode. Am I not even allowed to kiss you?” He jumped up on the podium, to get the necessary height, and suited action to words without waiting for her answer.

“Well,” she said a little later, slightly breathless, “ten points to Slytherin for knowing how to kiss a tall girl. The other blokes made me bend down so they could reach, and I always got the most awful crick in my neck.”

“Millie, I’m a conductor. Wand, podium, you name it, anything that makes my performers…perform better, I’ll use it. On the other hand, I’m sure you’ve noticed that a height difference stops mattering when everybody’s horizontal?”

Millie raised her eyebrows at him, and traced a finger around his lips while she thought. Her left thumb, actually—a bassoonist’s most developed feature. He drew in his breath, and let her see it. “Okay, the traditional location?”

“If you don’t object. Convenient for the future that we’re both in the same house, but I’d rather not let Snape in on every single thing I do from the first moment…” It was accepted Slytherin wisdom that their Head of House knew everything that went on in the dungeons, without exception, even if he rarely interceded.

“Well, come on, then!” Millie tossed her head so that her braid bucked in the air, and set off toward the practice rooms without waiting to see if he was following.

The practice rooms, unlike much of the castle, were carpeted for reasons of soundproofing. Theoretically. It was a handy byproduct that the floor was therefore quite comfortable to lie down on, and there was more space than you’d ever think. Blaise had made use of these helpful properties more than once in his career, and he guessed Millie had too. He drew the door to and began shedding clothes briskly, obedient to the no-foreplay declaration.

She’d never said he couldn’t look at her, though, and he took full advantage of that. Neither of them was wearing robes—they were just a nuisance when you were playing an instrument, and Blaise would look more like a bat than Snape ever did if he tried to conduct in them. Millie had on the usual girls’ uniform, round-necked white blouse, black gymslip, green and silver Slytherin silk scarf around her neck. She took that off first, setting it on the piano, then undid her sash and added that. “Zabini, unzip me,” and he was suddenly looking at her shoulderblades.

“Your hair’s in the way.”

“Oh, for the love of…” Millie grabbed her braid in one fist and flung it forward over her shoulder. “Better?”

“Much. Here we go.”

Blaise found the zip on the back of her gymslip and worked it down to the level of her hips. “Sure you want to do this?”

“What makes you think I don’t?”

“I’ve seen a bit more enthusiasm from you at other times—like during rehearsal—that’s all. If you’d rather use this room to get a bit of bassoon practice in, I won’t stop you.”

Millie turned around and—for the first time since the topic had arisen—smiled at him, a slow pleased smile that took time reaching her eyes but got there. “Don’t worry, Zabini. I like sex. I expect I’m going to like it fine with you.” She was unbuttoning her blouse as she spoke. “I always hated warming up with scales, that’s all. On the bassoon they’re a necessary evil. In bed…or wherever…why bother?”

Blaise grinned back, somewhat relieved. He was down to his boxers already, letting her have a good look if she happened to want it, and freeing him to observe as she shed her blouse and wriggled lavishly out of her tights. “Let me do your bra for you,” he offered, and got a rolled eye for his trouble, but she presented him once again with the broad creamy expanse of her back. She sighed a little as he undid the snaps—the bra was a lacy beige, with the kind of underwire you could probably use to fight a duel with if you were short your wand—and he traced a finger evilly along the faint red lines it left behind.

“Mm,” Millie murmured, almost as if in spite of herself. Blaise let his finger stray around her ribcage and explore along her breast; he was just finding the nipple when she moved away from him again.

“Even a concerto has an orchestral introduction before the soloist comes in, usually,” he pointed out.

“But not with the curtains closed on the stage,” she shot back, looking at his boxers, which had changed shape.

“Fair enough.” Ostentatiously, he contemplated her own underwear, which was plain black cotton and voluminous. “Would you like an upbeat?”

“Conductors,” Millie snarled, and disposed of her underwear before he had a chance to work his over its obstruction. She went ahead and made herself comfortable on the carpet, stretching out experimentally—the room was just big enough for her full length. “Ready when you are,” she informed him.

“Never let it be said that I kept a lady waiting.” Blaise paused, enjoying the view, and stayed on his feet. “Just one thing—“

“God, haven’t you ever heard of spontaneity? What now?”

“Take your hair down. Please?”

Millie made a face. “It’ll get all tangled. And dusty.”

“I’ll comb it out for you, afterward. Promise.”

“Oh, all right,” she sighed. “Decatenare.” The thick caramel braid immediately began to unwind itself, spreading a fan of hair on the floor around her head. Blaise looked at it with deep satisfaction, and got down to the business of pleasure.

 

*****************

“It’s an honor for Hogwarts,” Professor McGonagall said briskly. “The Ministry of Magic has been using the same premises since the Great Fire of London, and they say the new headquarters are long overdue and very modern—designed by Miriam Nightingale. The grand opening will be attended by virtually all the grandees of the British wizarding world, and a great number of foreign representatives as well.”

“My…my grandmother owled me about it,” Neville offered uncertainly. “Of course, she didn’t think I’d be…”

“It will be a pleasant surprise for her, won’t it, Mr. Longbottom?” McGonagall gave him one of her more feline smiles. “Mr. Malfoy, I expect your parents will be in attendance as well.”

Malfoy had been wearing a full-fledged scowl, which now became a more complex expression. “I expect so,” he said, biting the words off neatly. “May I ask, Professor, who chose the program? Not to say the performers?”

“A group process, Mr. Malfoy.” A poor effort for a Slytherin, McGonagall’s smile suggested. “Intended to showcase some of the best among current Hogwarts students. Mozart’s Oboe Quartet seemed the best possible choice. All four of you will be busy, of course, with this added responsibility on top of classes and orchestra rehearsals—and Miss Chang will be studying for her NEWTs as well—but the faculty have confidence that you will be able to manage the extra burden. You won’t betray our faith in you, will you, Mr. Longbottom?” Her teeth glinted.

“Yes, Professor, that is, no…”

Malfoy’s sharp voice cut across Neville’s struggles. “Is this a consolation prize, Professor?”

The Deputy Headmistress’ office fell silent for a moment. Hermione watched her Head of House, too unnerved to glance at Malfoy.

“There are no consolation prizes in music, Mr. Malfoy.” Professor McGonagall’s voice might have been gentle, or only deadly. “Only new chances. I suggest you make the most of this one, for the sake of Mozart.” She stood up, seeming taller than any of them. “Now, if you return to your dorms swiftly you will have time to get a little ahead on your homework before bed. The parts for the Oboe Quartet can be found in the music library; Madam Crotchet will assist you.”

“Thank you, Professor,” they said as one, having no other option, and left her office.

Neville sighed heavily and pushed his hair out of his face. “Why me? I hate playing in front of my grandmother, she terrifies me…at least Mozart usually has easy cello parts…”

“You’ll do fine and you know it,” Hermione scolded. “And it’s a lovely piece, I’ve heard recordings.”

“I can pass by the music library and pick up the parts,” Cho offered. “It’s as good as on the way to Ravenclaw Tower anyway, and that way we can meet tomorrow first thing after classes.”

“That would be great,” Hermione said, and Neville nodded vigorously; Malfoy just shrugged. “Only, Cho, I was going to ask—are you sure it won’t be a nuisance for you, extra rehearsals and all? I know you’ve got NEWTs revision.”

Cho looked down as they turned into the tight spiral of the nearest staircase, Malfoy drawing ahead of the girls and Neville falling behind. “It’s no problem, Hermione. I’m not really sure I’ll…I might not actually need NEWTs, anyway.”

“But you’re at the top of your class!” Hermione protested, dismayed. “Even Professor Snape admits you’re awfully good, and he hardly ever praises anyone but the Slytherins. You could get as many NEWTs as you liked.”

Cho smiled. “That’s nice of you to say. The fact is, though…I might go back to Korea after I leave. Well, ‘back’ isn’t the word exactly, I’m third-generation, but…my dad and mum are talking about moving back there, and they’ve suggested I go with them.”

“Are there…many wizards in Korea, then?” Hermione asked. Why didn’t she know more about this? Were there books in the library on it? Why weren’t there more hours in the day?

“Well, yes, and no…not so many in the sense people use it over here, but a lot of the _potongmin_ , you’d say Muggles, they’re not exactly Muggles the way people in Britain think about it.” Cho laughed, shaking her hair back off her face. “Sorry, my _aboji_ , my dad, this is his obsession, he’s always on about it. He’s done all kinds of research among the Koreans in Britain, what kind of magic different families have and how they use it…I’ll leave off now.”

“No, tell me more, please? It sounds fascinating.”

Cho knew Hermione well enough to see she meant it, clearly. “Well, just briefly, then…my dad’s what they call a pureblood here—“ she jerked her chin at Malfoy’s hunched shoulders, ten paces ahead of them— “but my mum’s a Muggle—but her family has always used magic.” She laughed again at Hermione’s quizzical look. “Confusing, isn’t it? My _halmae_ , my mum’s mum, she was what’s called a _mudang_ , a shaman? They’re not witches like we know it here, but it’s hard to know what to call what they do except magic. The line between wizard and Muggle is a lot more, oh, fluid over there. Most of the Asian countries never took the International Statute of Secrecy very seriously, you know.”

“I’ve read that,” Hermione agreed, pleased to find herself not entirely ignorant. “What the Japanese Muggle government got up to in World War II would have been improper use of magic by any Auror’s standards, they say.”

Cho rolled her eyes. “Tell a Korean, why don’t you? Anyway, my dad’s an Herbologist at St. Mungo’s, but he’s getting a bit sick of it and thinking about retiring early to go back to Korea and research all this properly. He’d like to publish the definitive paper on it,” she added, and smiled as Hermione’s eyes shone.

“And you’d go back to be, what, a sort of research assistant?”

“Something like that, yes. I’m curious about life over there—I can speak Korean well enough, though I’ve forgotten a lot since I came to Hogwarts, but I’ve never lived there and I’d like to give it a try. And, well, to be absolutely honest, I’d like to go somewhere where one’s breeding isn’t such a big deal.” Again she looked at the boy walking ahead of them. “Pureblood, half-blood, Muggle-born, Muggle—my family comes from a country that used to be a colony, you know? We’ve been there, done that. I can do without it. And—I can say this to you—it would be nice to _look_ like everyone else for a change.” She looked surprised at herself for having let that slip out.

“I can understand that.” Hermione passed a hand across her face. “And Parvati says the same, sometimes—when they go back to India for Diwali, that it’s nice to be just another face in the crowd.”

“Something like that, yes.” Cho sighed. “The real drawback, of course, is there aren’t a great many orchestras in rural Cheju. So I’m trying to get all the music I can in while I’m still at Hogwarts.”

“Well…if that’s how it is…then I’m glad we’ve got this extra chance. I still think you ought to take your NEWTs, though, just in case,” Hermione offered more or less reflexively, and was relieved when Cho laughed more genuinely than she had yet.

“Hermione Granger, I still don’t know why you weren’t Sorted into Ravenclaw.”

“Violinists have to be able to take risks,” Hermione answered, having thought about this a good deal. “Especially the leader. Percy Weasley was Gryffindor, too, remember?”

“So he was. Well, here’s the shortcut to the music library. Tomorrow after class, yes?”

“See you then. Sleep well, Cho.”

“And you.”

Neville had already turned off toward the Gryffindor tower, she realized; well, he’d figure out soon enough that she’d gone to get a bit of practice in. Not too much time left until curfew: she walked more briskly. This had the unfortunate effect of bringing her level with Malfoy.

“The dungeons are _that_ way,” Hermione informed him, helpfully, and got a look of full-scale sneering purebloodedness for her trouble.

“We aren’t rehearsing now, Granger. It isn’t incumbent on you to point out every tiny little mistake everyone around you could possibly be making at any given moment.”

“If I do that in rehearsal, it’s my job! I’m the leader, I’m supposed to know what’s happening in the orchestra. It’s to make the music better!”

“Naturally, the _music_. Not, oh, to feed your ego or anything like that. Not at all.”

“You’re one to talk,” Hermione snapped. “And by the way, the dungeons are _still_ that way. Not this way.”

“What, no expressions of gratitude?” Malfoy drawled. “I’m bestowing the honor of my presence on you, for longer than you could reasonably have expected. There are girls in all four houses who would risk even a Potions detention for the chance of a few minutes alone with me, you know.”

“And all purebloods, I’m sure,” Hermione said waspishly. “I’m surprised you dare be seen in the same corridor as a Muggle-born.”

Malfoy gave a delicate, martyred sigh. “The call of the muse sometimes demands sacrifices of us.”

“Is that a very roundabout way of saying that you forgot something in the rehearsal room?”

“In the practice rooms, actually. How clever of you to notice—at last. A reed-scraping knife, that’s all.”

“And it’s so important as to make you endure an extra dose of my company?” She wasn’t either blind or stupid, and Malfoy’s usual snide I-hate-Mudbloods attitude had been edged with real bitterness since the concerto competition. Better for the orchestra—and Professor McGonagall’s little plan—if he had a chance to get it out of his system, Hermione thought.

“You wouldn’t understand.” Contrary to her intentions, Malfoy sounded more tired than venomous. “Your instrument comes ready-made, you don’t have to do any of the work yourself to create it. Do you know how much time I spend just making reeds, before I can even start to practice?”

“Why don’t you just use a spell? I’m sure there is one.”

“Ignoramus,” Malfoy hissed.

Hermione blinked—she’d been called know-it-all more times than she could count, but ignoramus was a new one. Almost refreshing. “Well, pardon me.”

“And why are _you_ heading to the rehearsal room, anyway? The Gryffindor tower is _that_ way.” He was clearly mimicking her inflection.

“If you must know I want to practice. There’s still time until curfew.”

Malfoy was silent. Hermione saw his color was higher, and wondered what he was thinking. They walked on, in side-by-side hostility. He was just her height, she noticed, short for a man—Neville and Ron, her best friends in Gryffindor, had both shot up last year and stood head and shoulders above her now, though she was taller than her roommates Parvati and Ruth. Perhaps purebloods were a bit less evolved, she reflected meanly, inclined to be physically inferior? No, sadly that bit of reverse-prejudice wouldn’t hold water, Neville and Ron were both as pureblooded as they came. And look at Millie Bulstrode!

The lights in the big rehearsal room were still on, but it was empty, just the chairs and music stands set up for the orchestra. The doors to the practice rooms lined one wall. Hermione fetched her violin case from the rack, grabbed a music stand, and saw Malfoy reemerge from the farthest room with the little folding knife in one hand. “I might practice too,” he muttered, not looking at her. “Even if it’s too late. You’d better not think you’ll have the concerto two years running.”

“You know,” Hermione said, “I didn’t enter the competition _just_ to get one up on you.”

“Only mostly?” Malfoy answered sarcastically. “Doesn’t matter, anyway. You’ve done the damage.” He moved to the near practice room—someone had left the light on, it looked like—and put his hand on the doorknob, ready to ignore her.

“Why are you trying to make me feel guilty about it?” Hermione challenged, moving close to him. “I entered because I love playing the violin, I love the music! It’s not my fault if you think Muggle-borns—Mudbloods—can’t really be musical.” There, it was out.

Malfoy drew in his breath sharply, and Hermione found herself flinching as if he was about to hit her—or throw a hex at her. Her free hand felt for her wand, but he only swung hard away and opened the practice room door.

Hermione saw him freeze, and thought for a moment of some of the nastier hexes that could be lurking in corners of the castle, left God knew when for God knew who. She took a step forward so that she could see over his shoulder, and froze too.

Blaise Zabini and Millie Bulstrode: coffee and cream, the night sky and the moon, in glorious abandon on the practice room floor. They were not actually…they weren’t… . (Hermione’s good middle-class Muggle upbringing failed to present her with a word she could use with equanimity, both the four-letter ones and the clinical descriptions failing her.) Anyway, they weren’t doing _that_ , but it was extremely, extremely obvious that they just had been, and that they probably would be again in short order.

Millie’s eyes were closed; her hair flowed around her like blown glass, an amber flood. (Hermione tried to remember ever before seeing Millie with her hair unbraided, and couldn’t.) Her body was vast, lush, all creamy skin and generous curves. Blaise’s dark head was bent close to the satiny expanse of her stomach, tracing patterns on it with his tongue (tasting sweat-salt and the sweetness of skin, Hermione found herself imagining). Millie’s heavy breasts shimmered as she breathed in. Her hand came up languidly and found the back of Blaise’s neck, fingering down his spine one vertebra at a time, playing him like a bassoon, his back arching in slow motion under her touch.

(Draco and Hermione stood shoulder to shoulder, both watching with an intensity that rivalled the two in the practice room, both wanting to see what the other’s face looked like but unable to bring themselves to glance sideways.) Blaise twisted further across Millie’s body, kissing her mouth instead of her belly, with a demanding violence that made her hands clench into fists against his back. Her thighs, broad ivory massifs, gripped the sleek dark gleam of his legs, relaxed outward for a moment, then clutched harder. Her hair flared around them both in the moment of attainment, as if driven by an unseen wind.

A long suspended moment (Hermione and Draco both involuntarily pictured Blaise’s baton, poised in the air as the last note of the symphony resonated around him) and then Blaise sighed loudly and slid sideways off Millie, still with his usual neat ease of motion. He murmured something in her ear; she laughed softly, belly quivering, and freed a hand to massage her own breasts gently in the afterglow. Blaise stretched luxuriantly against Millie’s side, turning onto his back, and opened his eyes.

For the first time in her life as a violinist, Hermione could not bring herself to make eye contact with the conductor. A quick shamed glance in that general direction, though, was enough to catch the lazy grin spreading across Blaise’s face, and the placid satisfaction in Millie’s eyes. With one accord, in unison as perfect as they’d ever managed playing Brahms or Debussy, she and Draco turned and left Blaise and Millie to their second-movement andante (or had they already reached the scherzo?). Malfoy did, she noticed, close the door of the practice room behind him.

 They marched down the corridor side by side, entirely too embarrassed to look at each other or speak. Beyond the embarrassment, Draco was thinking that while, with his mother as the template, he’d always taken it for granted that a pretty woman must inevitably be slim, it might be about time to reexamine that assumption. Hermione was wondering if it would be entirely inappropriate to pass on to her roommates her reasoned appreciation, um, appraisal of the dimensions and textures of Blaise’s bum.

A staircase presented itself where one usually wasn’t, and both stopped, jerked out of their separate reveries. Much to Hermione’s surprise, it was Malfoy who spoke, and without much of his usual spite. “Well…that was _not_ what I had in mind.”

“I…um…didn’t know the practice rooms were…er…put to that use,” Hermione stammered.

 

“You wouldn’t,” Draco answered automatically, fighting off a sudden vision of Granger in Miss Bulstrode’s position. Where did _that_ come from? All right, when she was playing the concerto he’d found himself thinking she was more beautiful than he’d realized, but… never mind. “Not your…style, I’m sure.”

“And I expect you’ve had any number of…of experiences in the practice rooms?” she shot back, lightly.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Draco drawled, but the words couldn’t win against the tide of heat rushing up from collarbone to hairline. Damn his pureblooded, Northern European, fair-skinned ancestors all to hell! It wasn’t fair, Zabini’s coloring would keep him safe from this kind of thing, but Zabini never needed to blush anyway… .

Granger’s darker skin didn’t show a blush as easily as his, but her free hand went up to her cheek as if she was feeling one. “No, not particularly,” she said curtly. “Oh…oh, look, I’ve brought my violin along, that was awfully stupid of me. I can’t practice in the dorm.”

Draco looked down at his own hands, and found one of them still clutching his reed-scraping knife. “Well, I could get some reeds made…if I hadn’t left the reeds in my case in the rehearsal room.”

They looked at each other, and both choked on giggles. “Oh Lord,” Hermione sighed. “What next. Look…Malfoy…” Now the blush was visible even against her coloring. “This Mozart thing…is it…do you mind?”

“Mind having a chance to perform in public? With a classic of the oboe repertoire? I didn’t think you were thick, Granger.”

“Didn’t you just call me an ignoramus? I mean, well, before—“

“Yes, well,” he broke in quickly, to keep her from having to finish that sentence, “I suppose. Never mind, I forgot you were a Gryffindor. Synonymous with ignoramus, really.”

“You can stop avoiding my question,” Granger said, in what was probably her best version of a threatening voice.

“I’ve answered it. You weren’t listening well enough. Just don’t get so carried away with your Tchaikovsky that you hold me back when we play the Mozart.”

“And vice versa,” she snapped. 

They’d reached the bottom of the staircase. “Miss Granger, the Gryffindor tower is _that_ way,” he said, and won that round.

********************

Everyone knew you were supposed to be in your own dorm at night and not go wandering around the halls, and usually trying to break the rule was more trouble than it was worth. Professor Snape had a reputation for letting Slytherins and musicians off easy (if you were a musician in Slytherin, said school rumor, you had it made; if you happened to be a Gryffindor Quidditch player, God help you), but it took very little to push him too far, and Argus Filch was ruthlessly evenhanded (which often took the form of smacking you twice, once with each hand). Why take the risk? On the other hand, if there were rules about getting up very, very early, no one seemed to have noticed them.

Hermione had been taking advantage of this disciplinary blind spot since her first year. When the weather was good, she sometimes went up to one of the turrets and settled down in the morning sunshine with a book; sometimes in the winter she went to a cozy little study room that usually only admitted Ravenclaws, and got so deep into her reading that she missed breakfast. Most often, though, she went up to the rehearsal room for an hour or two of blissfully uninterrupted violin practice.

This morning, she was displeased to note that the lights were on already: someone had beaten her to it. Well, there was more than one practice room. The fateful one of that evening was, again today, lit from inside; with an instant of fascinated horror, Hermione put her ear to the crack, wondering if there could be anyone…any two…so energetic as to do _that_ at this hour of the morning. No, the first thing she heard was the steady tick, tick of a metronome spell, and then—

\--yes, that was Malfoy’s oboe, could be no one else. The cadenza-like passage from the third movement of the Mozart quartet, where the oboe skittered around madly while the strings looked on with placid quarter notes. She heard him work his way through it successfully at about half speed, then murmur “Celerius” to bring the metronome spell’s tempo up a notch. This time he had more trouble, sticking halfway through with a muttered oath—a pureblood curse, she noted with some amusement, heaven forbid Malfoy should lower himself to the ordinary four-letter-words that even pureblooded Ron made use of from time to time. She heard him take a deep breath and go back to the beginning of the phrase.

This time he made it through more or less successfully, if you didn’t count the three missed accidentals. Hermione found herself about to point out to him where he’d slipped up, and shut her mouth in a hurry.

Too late; he’d noticed something. “Who is that?” the sharp tenor demanded.

In for a Knut, in for a Galleon, as the purebloods said. “Um, me. Hermione. Granger.” Deciding that he wasn’t likely to invite her in, she opened the door and went in of her own accord.

Malfoy greeted her with a generalized scowl which seemed to take in her presence, the Mozart, the early hour, and probably the state of the wizarding world as a whole. “So what can I do for you, Miss Granger? Come to tell me the last half-dozen mistakes I made?”

“Er…” Hermione was caught off guard, and Malfoy grinned, only slightly sadistically.

“You were thinking just that, weren’t you? Well, set your mind at ease, I already know where I blew it. As it were. This may not be a concerto, but it’s damned tricky, you know.”

“It sounds it,” she agreed, relieved that his usual enmity wasn’t much on display. “It’s an oboe sonata, really, not a quartet—we’re just the accompaniment.”

“I’m sure the experience will be a good one for you. For once.”

Hermione sighed. “I expect it will be.” In purely musical terms, it was perfectly true. And speaking of concertos, the Tchaikovsky was waiting eagerly for her…she’d been planning to put some work in on the double stops at the poco piu lento…well, it would wait a few minutes longer. “Um, Malfoy? Since we’re both here…”

“By chance…”

“…of course…would you do me a favor? I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

“I am to do you a favor,” Malfoy repeated, with precise emphasis on the pronouns. “And will pigs be flying around the castle later today?”

Hermione flashed back momentarily to Ron, two or three years back on a rainy day in the Gryffindor common room, telling her _My mum had a brood of winged pigs back when I was little, she said they were brilliant for bacon, but the neighbors started complaining and then the twins got involved…_ She gulped. “You never can tell,” she said. “You did the Strauss concerto for the competition, didn’t you? Would you play it for me?”

She listened to the metronome spell, ticking away in the silent room. She’d counted twenty-seven ticks when Draco burst out furiously, “Oh, finite incantatem,” and the sound released them. “So what is it, Granger? Want to gloat? Well, go ahead. But close the bloody door first!”

Even Malfoy could swear like a Muggle when the spirit moved him, she noted, closing the door and noticing as she did so that her hands were quivering a little. She thought of trying to explain— _I don’t want to gloat, I want to know how good you really are, when you’re not just shooting your mouth off. I’ve heard you in orchestra, I want to hear you for real._ No, if she said anything else now, he’d probably kick her out.

He was ignoring her rather obviously, fussing with his reed the way oboists did, not bothering with sheet music—he’d probably had the whole concerto movement memorized well before the competition, the way she had. Hermione leaned back against the door and found something neutral to look at, the little high window in the far wall, showing a slice of bleary dawn sky. She heard Malfoy draw a deep breath, and begin to play.

 _So that’s what they mean by ‘a melting tone,’_ Hermione thought, after the first flood of notes had released her. _It makes your knees all weak. Falling at his feet would probably not be a good move…_. She leaned back more heavily on the door, and listened with her whole body.

Malfoy was a good enough musician in all the technical senses, she thought vaguely, striving for objectivity. She knew that already from orchestra, of course. He’d mastered all the difficult fingerings, his dynamics were precise and well-calculated, his tempi steady where they needed to be, he had a sense of what the music was trying to do. What set him apart, though, was that beautiful tone. Rich and creamy, almost like a clarinet or flute that way, with none of the metallic nasal sound of so many student oboists—but with the clear, sharp edges that only an oboe could have. The Strauss concerto was a chance for him to pour out glorious floods of sound, shining like sunlight on water.

(Hermione remembered talking music in the common room once, with Neville and Ruth and three or four Weasleys. _Strauss is all about sex anyway,_ Fred had said lazily, or was it George? When Ruth protested, he told her _Go listen to_ Don Juan _, do,_ and made her blush.) She felt the music—and Malfoy playing it, be honest with yourself, girl—having its nearly inevitable, tingling result, and stood very still, not to encourage anything to happen that shouldn’t.

The first movement was over before she knew it, all too soon. Malfoy, breathless and very flushed, detached his reed carefully and murmured “Madide” to it—a spell to keep it moist, she guessed. _There’s one I really don’t need right now…down, girl._ Then he took a Slytherin-green handkerchief (silk?) out of his sleeve and wiped his face. “Well?” he said, rather sulkily, not looking at her.

Hermione cleared her throat. The comment which came to mind first was, _I think I’ve fallen madly in love with you, but of course I know that’s only a pseudo-emotional interpretation of a purely physical attraction, which means you must be an awfully good oboist because I certainly wouldn’t be attracted to you if you were a random blond twerp._ Possibly this was the wrong note to strike. “You set the bar high, don’t you?” she said finally.

“Sorry?” Malfoy blinked.

“With you playing that well, do you realize how hard it’s going to be for me to live up to beating you in the competition? Everyone will think I only won because Professor McGonagall favored a student in her House. I’m going to have to practice my fingers bloody to make them say different.”

Malfoy frowned for a moment, possibly not sure how serious she was, and then suddenly gave a dazzling grin she’d never seen before. _Oh Lord._ “I’ll take that as a compliment, so thank you, Miss Granger. But I wouldn’t worry. Anyone with that on their mind will probably go and complain to Professor Snape.”

Hermione groaned, a little artificially. “Then I’ve really had it, haven’t I? He hates me. He calls me an insufferable know-it-all every single time he sees my face.”

“Well, you are one,” Malfoy pointed out, insufferably. “That’s not what he’ll say to anyone who complains about the competition, though. Well, not _only_ that, anyway.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it’s not what he said to me.” He made her wait for it, until she had to bite her tongue. “He said I’d done well, but you’d done better. He said your Tchaikovsky was beautiful.”

“ _Snape_ did?” she squeaked, immediately annoyed at herself for sounding like a first-year.

Malfoy rolled his eyes. “You ought to know the Professor’s as much a musician as he is a potions master. He wouldn’t lie about music, not even about a Gryffindor.”

“Oh,” Hermione said, idiotically, and swallowed hard. “And neither would you, would you? Well. All right then.” She opened the door, without really knowing what she was doing, and backed out before realizing she’d forgotten something. “Malfoy? Thank you.”

She heard a long sigh, and then, in his most pureblooded, aristocratic drawl, “Oh, you’re quite welcome.

************************

They’d have to hurry to get to dinner. That day’s Mozart practice really ought to have been just a half hour or so, a quick run-through and a few rough spots polished, in the spare time after classes; but once they started it was hard to stop. Cho was the first to make her escape, saying (with a wink at Hermione) that she had revision waiting. After that Neville started to look fidgety and uncomfortable, until Draco finally asked him impatiently what was wrong, and he confessed he’d promised to coach Ruth and Ron through an Herbology essay before dinner.

“So go already,” Malfoy drawled. “Granger and I will work out a few last kinks before we leave.”

“Speak for yourself, Malfoy,” Hermione snapped, trying not to blush. “Neville, I’ll see you at dinner, all right?”

Neville put his cello away, humming a fragment of the oboe line as he did so, and Hermione and Malfoy got down to work again. There were places, especially in the first movement, where the violin echoed the oboe’s melody line, and the articulation had to be as similar as the two different instruments could manage. They were deep into it, absorbed, when the rehearsal room clock’s long hand swung from “Rehearsing” to “Enough Already” with a pointed clunk.

“Dinner time? Now?” Malfoy swore under his breath. “We haven’t even looked at the third movement. Can you come back after dinner?”

“Yes—no. I haven’t finished my History of Magic essay, or studied for the Arithmancy test.”

“Granger, the test is on Friday, and the essay isn’t due until next week! If you’re going to be so bloody obsessive, can’t you obsess about music at least?”

“It’s important to me to get good grades,” Hermione told him sweetly. “After all, there are some misguided people who think Muggleborns can’t cope with the magical world. I have to prove them wrong.”

Malfoy, cleaning his oboe with a silk scarf, gave her a dirty look. “Typical of a Mudblood to rely on hard grind for good grades.”

“Watch your mouth!” The violin strings made an agonized _keeeee keeeee_ noise as she scrubbed the cleaning cloth a bit too hard over them. “Go ahead, tell me all purebloods can do the work without even trying. Do, please.”

They walked down toward the Hall together—no, not together, perforce side by side—in irate silence.

Until, from the staircase that usually led up to Gryffindor Tower, Hermione heard banging, thumping, and yelling. She saw Malfoy flinch. “Just the Quidditch team,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Just?” he said, and then the Quidditch players, likewise bound for dinner, descended on them, all meeting on the next flight down. It was Harry Potter and his usual gang—Finnigan, that fifth-year who couldn’t do Arithmancy—Sloper, that was his name—and that seventh-year with the lantern jaw, whose name Hermione could never remember. They must have just come in from a practice.

“Granger,” Finnigan nodded to her, and Potter raised a casual hand. Then his eyes fixed on the Slytherin boy. “Hey, _Malfoy_ —what’re you doing with a Gryffindor girl? I thought your kind wouldn’t associate with Muggleborns.”

“I certainly don’t associate with halfbreeds like you,” Malfoy spat. “Fuck off, do.”

“Such _language_ ,” the seventh-year crowed. “What a brat—is he really a classmate of yours, Potter?”

“Too right he is.” Potter moved in on Malfoy’s other side, forcing Hermione close against the rough stone wall. “You want to leave Gryffindors alone, Malfoy. Go back to _blowing_ that thing of yours.” He made oboe-playing movements, down at the level of his crotch, and the other boys whooped.

Malfoy swung on him, wand out, and Potter punched him in the face. The whole thing happened so fast Hermione was three steps further down before her brain processed what she’d seen. By that time Malfoy was hunched against the wall with one hand to his face, and the Gryffindor boys were clattering down the flight below. “Pureblood poof! Think you’re better than us!” was their parting sally. Hermione thought she recognized Potter’s voice.

She stopped, speechless, and climbed uncertainly back up to stand next to Malfoy. “Um…are you all right?” _And if he calls me thick again, well, after that line it’s no more than I deserve._

Malfoy muttered something which she suspected was the same thing he’d said to Potter last. Ridiculously reassured by the snarl, she dragged his hand away from his face (“Let _go_ of me!”) and examined the damage. His left eye was closed tight, not swollen yet but obviously heading that way—he was going to have a spectacular black eye in a few hours. Well, except that wizards were usually spared these indignities. “Episki,” she said, before he could struggle out of her grasp.

“ _Ow_! Interfering Mudblood, will you…! What makes you think I need--!”

The basic healing done, Hermione let him twist away from her. Years of experience in the common room had taught her not to get in the middle of boys’ fights, physical or otherwise. “Let me know when you want to learn some tricks for dealing with bullies,” she shot at him, and went down the stairs without waiting.

Malfoy did not appear at dinner. Hermione sat down between Ron and Parvati, at the far end of the table from Potter’s lot, and found she had very little appetite.

What did she know about Harry Potter? Not much, considering they’d been classmates in the same House for six years. He’d lost his parents to a broom accident when he was small, she did know that. Like her he’d been raised by Muggles, in his case an aunt and uncle, who still sent him packages of Muggle snacks and such regularly (the sugary stuff that Hermione’s parents considered just short of poison). She’d seen him poring over clippings from Muggle newspapers, always the sports pages, apparently sent by his cousin—they’d played football together, she remembered hearing. He wasn’t as slow as Neville at most classes, but he didn’t work very hard either. He’d been the youngest to make the House Quidditch team in years, and he spent all the time he could get away with on the Quidditch pitch.

It wasn’t as if the orchestra and the Quidditch teams were two opposing armed camps. They never held orchestra rehearsals during Quidditch matches, because everyone wanted to go and cheer for their House. A few people even managed to find the time to take part in both at once—the Weasley twins of yore, for instance. Demon Beaters for the Gryffindor team in a no-holds-barred match against Slytherin, and then three hours later showered and changed and ready to play first and second trombone in a crackerjack trio, in perfect harmony with Lucian Bole—a Slytherin to his bones—on bass trombone.

Hermione heard plenty of Quidditch talk among her friends. Neville was only a lukewarm fan and Parvati found matches boring (“not enough girls on the school teams”), but Ruth had a huge Holyhead Harpies poster up in their dorm room, and Ron, when not talking your ear off about Mahler (honestly, timpanists…), was usually talking it off about the Chudley Cannons. Quidditch was part of Hogwarts life as much as the orchestra was.

It was just, some people didn’t see it that way. Hermione still remembered Potter’s incredulous voice near the end of their first year—“An _orchestra_ concert? _Boring_ \--“ and the look of confused hurt on Ron’s freckled face. She didn’t pick on him for liking Quidditch. Why couldn’t Potter and his gang live and let live? They were as bad as—

“Hermione?” Parvati’s voice. “Is there some reason you’re staring at Harry Potter?”

“Um. No,” Hermione said flatly, and found that she still had two uneaten chops on her plate when everyone else had moved on to dessert. “Just staring into space.” And she went back to staring into space. She spent the rest of dinner rehearsing lines in her head, and when Potter got up from the table she went after him and delivered them.

“Potter? Harry? Here. Just a minute.” Hogwarts abounded with convenient alcoves; Hermione dragged Potter into one of them before he could say two words about it. If anything, he looked rather astonished; they didn’t usually cross paths very often, having no interests in common.

“What’s up, Granger? If that Slytherin poof was bothering you—“

“Muffliato,” Hermione cast hurriedly. “Harry Potter, if I ever see you bullying _anyone_ like that ever again, I will hex you into the middle of next week!” Yes, the soundproofing spell had been worth doing. “And you know I can, even if your whole gang is there, so don’t try me. That was four against one! You call yourself Gryffindors?!”

Potter looked both amazed and a little guilty. “Look, that was Malfoy. He’s a Slytherin, a blood purist—you must know what a prejudiced arsehole he is. You heard him call me a halfbreed, and I’ll bet he calls you worse.”

“So you’re going to show him halfbloods and Muggleborns are just as bad as he thinks they are? Grow up, Potter! Malfoy’s no better than his upbringing, but he’s smart enough to learn better in time. On present showing, I’m not sure you are.”

“Hey—“

“Take a good look at me, Potter, you notice even with that Quidditch all-weather tan of yours I’m a bit darker than you are? My grandmother was from Trinidad. Now I can pass most times, and where I’m from people don’t say those words out loud, but my mum heard things a lot worse than _Mudblood_ when she was growing up. She didn’t bother calling names back. She got smart. Why don’t you try that too? Oh, and Potter—“ while he was still sputtering—“I’ve read that people who call other people poofs are the ones most afraid they’re poofs themselves. Nothing wrong with that if it’s true, of course. Finite incantatem,” and she left him standing.

It took her an hour to stop shaking.

She went up to the dorm and did homework, because that was what she did. God and Professor Binns only knew what her History of Magic essay read like, but it helped her calm down. Parvati, sprawled on her own bed with a Charms textbook and the latest _Witch Weekly_ , reached over every once in a while and patted her shoulder, and Hermione thanked Whoever watched over wayward witches for friends who didn’t need explanations.

After a while, when she’d relaxed enough to start getting interested in the essay topic, she realized there was something else she needed to do. Yes, there was time before curfew, if she was quick. “Parvati? I’m going up to practice a bit. Just for a while.”

“You and your violin, the great Hogwarts romance,” Parvati yawned. “Be safe.”

“You bet.” Hermione stroked her roommate’s hair gratefully on her way out.

 

He should have known Granger would find him in a practice room. (You did know, that’s why you went back to practice in the first place, and not down to the dorms to lick your wounds…never mind.) The Mozart and the Tchaikovsky were too close to home right now; he took out the Ninth instead, and when even that started to defeat him, resorted to the Dukas, the piece every student orchestra in the wizarding world had to play, one they’d been doing on and off at Hogwarts since he was a first-year. Well, since long before that.

After a bit of that, calmer, he went back to the Beethoven, to the fragments of melody in the third movement. Slow and wistful, sad enough to weep over but not an elegy, not grieving—poignant, that was the word—

The door eased open.

Draco readied his best glare. His eye didn’t hurt much, that was something—for a Mudblood, she knew her way around a healing spell.

“Don’t stop,” she said, coming just into the room and closing the door behind her, as she’d done before. “That sounded lovely.”

“You interrupt my practice in order to tell me not to stop practicing?”

“Um. Something like that. Actually, I interrupted your practice in order to tell you, um… Well. I’ve told Potter that, um, he oughtn’t to behave like that. As a fellow Gryffindor. You know.” She was looking down at the floor, playing with a strand of hair.

Draco found himself torn between angry humiliation and tickled amusement. “Just walked up to him and said ‘Now, you ought not be a nasty bully,’ did you? The same way you tell the second violins not to forget their G sharps, I’m sure.”

“Actually—“ Granger looked up at him with a touch of a grin. “I told him I’d hex him into next week if he tried that game again. And he knows I could.”

Well, naturally. Hermione Granger was the most accomplished witch in their year, and everyone knew it.

“Also—well—“ Now she was really grinning, a little guiltily. “What Potter called you—“

“Hm? Oh, a poof?” Just one of Potty-mouth’s standard insults, he hadn’t much thought about it.

“In the Muggle world these days, they say people who make the most fuss about calling others that are the ones who are like that themselves.” Her wide mouth quirked. “I passed that on to him too. For his information. You know.”

“In the spirit of scientific inquiry,” Draco drawled, highly titillated. “I’ve never thought to look at Potter in that light before.”

“Not that it’s a bad thing if he is one,” Hermione cautioned, her usual schoolmarm manner returning. “Or if you are. Um…can I ask…are you?”

Malfoy blinked. “Not the last time I checked. Do you have a personal interest in the matter?”

“Um…” Remarkably inarticulate, was Hermione Granger today.

“Are you?” he suggested helpfully. “I know that roommate of yours is that way inclined, Patel, the clarinet one.”

“The clarinet Patel, honestly, her name’s Parvati,” Granger retorted, reviving slightly. “And if you must know, she told me and Ruth all about that in third year and promised she wouldn’t, um, ravish us in our sleep. Unless one of us asked her to. Which, since you ask, Ruth hasn’t and neither have I.”

“Well then, that’s all cleared up,” Draco said benignly, suppressing relief. “Anything else I can do for you before I return to my practice?”

“Malfoy, you are such a …look. Potter’s not, well, it’s probably better that he was Sorted Gryffindor and not Ravenclaw, but…he and his gang wouldn’t be so awful to you if you weren’t…oh…”

“So awful to them?” Typical. She’d spend five minutes solid lecturing the cello section on their intonation and their timing, and then turn around and give her own first violins just the same.

“Well, yes!” She was fiddling with her hair again, looking everywhere but at his face. “In general, I mean. The other pureblooded students don’t act as if it matters so much, but you…”

“It does matter.” Now he couldn’t look at her face, either.

“Give me one _logical_ reason why!”

“Granger, an hour ago you healed my face on the stairs. Kind of you, by the way. Give me one _logical_ reason why Episki works the way it does. Or any other spell you used today.”

“It’s not the same thing.” Her eyes met his. “I can’t tell you why, but I can tell you—prove to you—that it works. Can you prove to me that I’m inferior to you because I’m a Muggleborn? A Mudblood?”

He knew he couldn’t. “It’s not individuals, Granger. There are gifted Mudbloods, I won’t deny the obvious. It’s the whole society—change over generations—“

“And that’s a bad thing? Look at this—“ She moved closer to him, grabbing the sheet music he’d been working on. “The Ninth? The most amazing piece of music either of us will ever play? There’s Bach in that, and Mozart, and Haydn, but Beethoven didn’t try to write exactly the same kind of music as they did, he took what he needed from the old ways and added his own talent. Why can’t magic work that way?”

Draco was silent. Oddly enough he’d never had this argument with her before—perhaps they’d both taken each other’s stances for granted—although she might be surprised to know how often similar debates went on between purebloods in the Slytherin common room… .One of them didn’t understand, and never would, but he hadn’t been sure, for longer now than he’d let her see, which one it was.

Instead of continuing along parallel lines, he asked the question uppermost in his mind. “It’s clear enough Potter hates me, and I can’t say I’m broken-hearted over it, but do you?”

“Do I what?” rather foolishly.

“Do you hate me?” he repeated, doggedly.

Hermione’s head snapped up, and she smiled. “Oh. No. Of course not.”

“Really,” he said, packing as much skepticism into the one word as he could manage.

“No. I mean, yes, really. Look—Malfoy—how many times have you called me Mudblood?”

“Would that be today, or this week, or in the past year, or…?”

“Yes, exactly. Times without number. When I won the competition, you went to Professor Snape to complain, didn’t you?”  
“Granger, I’m not following your logic here…”

“Bear with me. Did you tell Snape that I shouldn’t be allowed to win because I was a Mudblood?”  
“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous. Do you think the Professor would let me get away with an argument like that? He’s a halfblood himself, and he only cares about the music anyway. I told him I refused to believe you’d played better than I had, and he told me—well, what I told you before.”

“Did you go to your father? Have him tell the Hogwarts Board that they shouldn’t be allowing Mudbloods in the orchestra?”

“Are you joking?” The possibility hadn’t even crossed his mind.

Granger nodded briskly. “That’s my point. I don’t like the way you talk to me, but it’s just talk. There’s a Muggle saying, ‘Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will never hurt me…’”

“That’s not it,” Draco corrected automatically. “You mean, ‘A spell or hex may break our necks, but…’ “

She grinned. “Well, one way or another. I mean, it’s not that a word doesn’t hurt, it can, it does, but it hurts less to be called a Mudblood than it would to be kept out of the orchestra because I’m one, for instance.” She was watching his face, checking his expression. “Like I said to Potter…I learned this from my mother. She sometimes had a hard time when she was younger, on account of being half white and half black…Muggles worry about these things, you know,” Hermione added ironically, seeing his look of bafflement. “But she said—not to me, actually, to my dad—they might have called girls like her names, but they couldn’t keep her out of dental school, and that was the most important thing. She had choices _her_ mother, my gran, didn’t have. Like you said. Society changes.”

Draco shook away layers of confusion— _sometime I’ll think about all this!_ —and focused on the important issue. “So you find me tolerable because I’m—“ a comment overheard in the common room more than once came to mind—“all mouth and no trousers? I talk nasty, but I don’t do anything?”

“Well…” After her rather passionate explanation, she looked sheepish again. “I suppose you could put it that way.”

Draco took a deep breath, as if he were about to plunge into his concerto once again. “Then it’s about time I did something, isn’t it?” he said, and stood up and kissed her.

 

Recapitulation and Coda

The posters had gone up all over Hogsmeade, and all four of them (burdened as they were with instruments and dress clothes) stopped to look at the one outside Hogsmeade Station. The Hogwarts castle, silhouetted against a pale, star-lit sky (as you looked at the poster, the sky gradually blushed dawn-color), and in white letters on the dark castle: _Hogswarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry 800 th Memorial Founders Concert. Paul Dukas: The Wizard’s Apprentice. Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto (first movement). Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony no. 9 in D “Choral.” Student Conductor: Blaise Zabini. Violin Solo: Hermione Granger. Soprano Solo: Bellatrix Black. Alto Solo: Minerva McGonagall. Tenor Solo: Gilderoy Lockhart. Bass Solo: Kingsley Shacklebolt. Hogwarts Student Orchestra. Hogwarts All-School Chorus._

“…Oh my,” said Neville finally, more or less summarizing Hermione’s reaction.

The London-bound Hogwarts Express was nearly empty, on a weekday afternoon in the middle of term. The four of them had all the space they wanted, and it felt queer and nervous-making. Cho promptly claimed a compartment to herself, took out her viola, and began to play scales. Neville took the next one over, saying he might practice or he might catch a bit of a nap—“ I was so nervous last night, I couldn’t sleep properly. I kept dreaming we were about to go on stage at the Ministry and I’d forgotten to put any clothes on.”

Draco and Hermione chuckled. “Don’t worry, Longbottom,” Draco told him dryly. “I would never let you get away with such a fashion faux-pas. Sleep well.” He saluted Neville and headed for the compartment on the far side of Cho’s. Hermione, half thinking she’d take the last one, was moving past him when she felt his hand catch her wrist, cool against her skin. His eyebrows did all the talking, and she followed him into the compartment.

 

Their first kiss, up in the practice room that day, had had more symbolic than actual value. Draco hadn’t done much kissing. He’d kissed Pansy when he took her to the Yule Ball in fourth year, during the big international student orchestra festival; one kissed one’s date, after all. A chaste, polite brush of lips, because he didn’t want to have to think about what came next. In fifth year, after Pansy got her big romantic crush on…never mind, he’d promised her never to tell…he’d taken out Daphne once or twice, and Monica Rowle once, and this year Rachel Summers. All Slytherin purebloods, of course. Not much more kissing than with Pansy. Not much to learn from.

As far as he knew, Hermione was even less experienced than he—she’d never gone out with anyone that he knew of, with the one big exception being the fourth year Ball when that star cellist from the Durmstrang orchestra had asked her out. (He was probably a good kisser, too, Draco thought, experiencing a brief spasm of retroactive jealousy.)

So that first kiss hadn’t been a notable success; it hadn’t started off very well, and they’d both been too nervous to figure out how to get it right from there. Much better, though, was what naturally followed on: standing there with his hands on her hips and hers around his waist, his head on her shoulder and vice versa. Warm. She wasn’t built quite on Millie Bulstrode’s statuesque lines, but his hands cupped generous curves, and her whole body against his had a delicious fullness. He hoped she hadn’t thought he was too short, too scrawny… .

If she had, though, she’d shown no signs of it in the time since. Practice helped, with kissing as with the violin or oboe; they were both enjoying the process of becoming adept. They hadn’t gone much further than that, their progress slowed by mutual inhibitions and respective moral codes, but it was more fun every day.

The steady jolt and rumble of the train proved the perfect background for a perfect interlude, and Draco found himself putting a tune to it in his head. After some delicate and sensuous mutual exploration, Hermione laughed a little breathlessly, and he felt it as a quiver of skin on skin. “Do you always hum Beethoven when you’re…when you’re…”

“Spooning?” Draco offered helpfully. “Cuddling? Frolicking?”

“What a vocabulary for a pureblood. Ought I to take it that you’re feeling joyful?”

He smiled. “That too. No, I was thinking of the words.”

“ _Freude, schöne Götterfunken_ …” Hermione sang, half aloud. Her German accent wasn’t bad for a Muggleborn. “ _Tochter aus Elysium. Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische dein Heiligthum_ …”

“ _Deine Zauber binden wieder_ ,” Draco joined in, his tenor matching her soprano, “ _was die Mode streng geteilt_ … do you speak German?”

“Only a few words,” she confessed. “I learned the lyrics mostly by rote.”

“That’s the part I like best. ‘Your magic binds together what custom has rigidly set apart’…”

She smiled, and touched his cheek and then kissed him, and he wished for a moment they might stay here in the liminal space of the train for ever.

 

Certainly the new Ministry of Magic was very impressive. The big glass atrium glowed with newness—literally glowed. For the grand opening, the architectural spells strung through it had been made visible, delicate shimmering lines of color everywhere across roof and walls, ice-blue and jade-green and moon-white and rose-gold. It was like a Muggle shopping centre at Christmas, Hermione thought irreverently—but more beautiful, she had to admit.

The music stands and chairs were black metal outlines against the light, a solid semi-circle right in the middle of everything. They stood clustered at the back entrance, waiting to be called. Percy Weasley was wearing new dress robes, dark brown with a hint of gold, that must have cost him half a month’s salary at least: he looked as if he’d been too busy to sleep for the last week, but his eyes were shining like the spell-light. “Ready?” he whispered, and Draco, typically, nodded without troubling to look at the rest of them. Percy cleared his throat, murmured “Sonorus,” and spoke so that all the assembled grandees could hear.

“Ladies and gentlemen and other gentlebeings, Minister and honored visitors, I have the pleasure of presenting to you four _very_ talented young musicians from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. They will be presenting Mozart’s Oboe Quartet in F for your delectation.” He gestured for them to move out, Neville first. “The cellist is Neville Longbottom.”

Applause, startling in its vigor. Neville went scarlet, but kept his back straight as he walked out to his chair. Even the well-tailored dark suit and Gryffindor-red tie (Hermione was pretty sure he’d had some forced fashion-counseling from Draco) couldn’t erase his podginess altogether, but the sureness in his posture meant it didn’t matter. She remembered suddenly that in their first year Potter and his lot had spent some time teasing Neville about being shaped just like his cello, and that it had only made Neville love the cello more.

“The violist, Miss ChoYeon Chang.”

Hermione had never heard Cho’s full name before. The seventh-year had her black hair swept up on the back of her head, fastened with a glittering concoction of rhinestone and thin silver chains. She was wearing a long, sleeveless black dress, absolutely unadorned, showing off all her inner and outer elegance: proud before Britain and Korea, wizard and Muggle.

“The violinist—and leader of the Hogwarts orchestra—is Miss Hermione Granger.”

Hermione took a deep breath and followed Cho out. She couldn’t help wishing for a free hand to check that her hair was behaving, but Parvati’s gold clasp seemed to be holding. Her roommate had all kinds of jewelry and accessories that she wore at every opportunity, but the little sandalwood box of gold—necklace, rings and bracelet, and hair clasps—was sacred. “It’s Indian wizarding gold,” Parvati had explained, a little wistfully. “Padma has a set just like it, we were given them when we were born. It’s only for—well, for very, very special occasions.” And she’d taken the biggest hair clasp out and told Hermione to wear it for the concert.

Other than that she couldn’t match Cho’s loveliness, but she had nothing to be ashamed of either. She was wearing her orchestra black dress, long-sleeved and full-skirted, a present from her parents two years before. She kept her back as straight as Neville’s, and held her violin close.

“And finally the oboist, Draco Malfoy.”

Hermione let him fill her eyes. Next to Neville he looked small and slight, but the black suit was exquisitely cut, and his light hair shone almost silver against it, like the subtle hints of silver in his Slytherin-green tie. His head was raised with all a pureblood’s hauteur. His eyes moved around the atrium, and she knew he was looking for his father. I love you, she thought, involuntarily.

The applause swelled, and settled into anticipatory silence. No tuning here, they had agreed. Hermione thumbed her strings, checked her sheet music and glanced automatically at the others: Neville and Cho with bows raised and ready, Draco slipping the oboe reed between his lips. In the orchestra she was leader, she reminded herself, but here it was up to him.

His eyes met Neville’s, Cho’s, then hers. A suspended moment, a fermata. Neither of them was a Legilimens, but neither needed to be. I love you, Hermione thought again, and knew that it was true and that, for the moment, it was less important than its corollary: I trust you. Making music with Draco, there was nothing to fear, ever: and knowing that was almost as good as knowing that he knew the same of her.

He smiled, just for a moment, just perceptibly around the oboe reed; and then his face sobered, and he took a deep breath, gathered them all up in his gaze, tilted his head back a little, and their bows moved with his breath and the music began.

 

Deine Zauber binden wieder,

Was die Mode streng geteilt;

Your magic binds together again

that which custom has rigidly divided:

\--Schiller, “Ode to Joy,” set to music in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the original prompter and fest mod. 
> 
> You may have noticed one of my less minor (?) departures from canon: making Hermione mixed-race. (Well, there’s nothing in canon that I know of that specifically says she isn’t, and I never saw her as Emma Watson anyway…). I read a few things about the idea (there’s a good essay online by Lucía Elena Flores on the topic) and just liked it. If anything about her portrayal seems inappropriate from a POC’s perspective, please someone let me know and I’ll try to get educated.
> 
> I am not specially a Harry-basher, by the way; somehow he ended up the villain, because it felt right, but I think the Harry in this fic is more misguided than evil. He may learn better.
> 
> While they have only bit parts here, the characters of Anne and Theresa Fairleigh, and the characterization of Theodore Nott, come from the excellent fics by “Elsha” on the Sugar Quill website. If I knew the author’s current contact info, I would get in touch to ask for permission…


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